It's Getting "Meta" All the Time

This weekend I had the opportunity to ruminate about the self-consciously self-referential word meta for NPR's "All Things Considered" and for my language column in the Sunday Boston Globe. That's an awful lot of meta-commentary, but I've still got some more thoughts on meta, or make that meta-thoughts on meta.

First, let's take things back to basics. The prefix meta- upon which the adjective meta is based has an extremely complex history. In ancient Greek, the preposition meta could mean "along with," "after," or "between." Via Latin, that meaning shows up in some English meta-words, such as metacarpus (the part of the hand that lies between the wrist, or carpus, and the fingers) and metatarsus (the part of the foot between the ankle, or tarsus, and the toes). It also developed a meaning relating to "change," which we see in metamorphosis ("change of form or shape") and metaphor (literally a "transfer," as a metaphor transfers an expression to something it does not literally apply to).

The field of metaphysics got its name from the collected work of Aristotle. The great philosopher's treatises on the natural world were called The Physics, and his works on the first principles of things were typically grouped after The Physics. So metaphysics ("after The Physics") originally referred to nothing more than how Aristotle's books got ordered by later editors. But over time, metaphysics was reinterpreted to mean the science of things beyond the physical world. With that understanding of the prefix meta- in place, the meaning of "above, beyond" took hold, often referring to higher-order abstractions: metalanguage is language about language, meta-analysis is analysis about analysis, metatheory is theory about theory, and so forth. (No wonder postmodernist thinkers love exploiting meta-.)

Fans of the writer Douglas Hofstadter will be familiar with how he exulted in the meta- prefix to explore the concept of recursivity. In his classic 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach, he presents a dialogue between Achilles and The Genie. The Genie grants Achilles a wish, but when he wishes for a hundred wishes, the Genie has to appeal to the meta-Genie, who grants meta-wishes (wishes about wishes). The Genie also reveals that "GOD" is an acronym for "GOD Over Djinn" — a recursive acronym, of course. In his online comic xkcd, Randall Munroe satisfied Hofstadter fans by imagining his six-word biography: "I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym" (the acronym of which spells out IS META).

As I noted on Language Log last year when the xkcd strip came out, the use of meta as a standalone adjective was only popularized after Gödel, Escher, Bach (as well as Hofstadter's Scientific American column "Metamagical Themas," from the early '80s). Now it means, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, "designating or characterized by a consciously sophisticated, self-referential, and often self-parodying style, whereby something (as a situation, person, etc.) reflects or represents the very characteristics it alludes to or depicts." If you cast your eye on the meta pug, the pug-in-a-pug-outfit featured on the Tumblr blog That's So Meta, meta-ness in its current meaning will become crystal clear.

As I was delving into the history of meta, my colleague Georgia Scurletis brought to my attention how meta has been used in educational circles to refer to meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) or meta-learning (learning about learning). According to the constructivist school of educational theory, students need to get meta-cognitive in order to be active learners, and it's the teacher's job to get students to "go meta." Jerome Bruner, a pioneer in constructivist theory, has been talking this way since the mid-'80s:

There was also talk about how people go beyond merely knowing about things to reflecting upon them in order to effect correction and self-repair — how to get students to reflect, to turn around on themselves, to go "meta," to think about their ways of thinking.—"Notes on the Cognitive Revolution" (Interchange, 1984)

In a word, the best approach to models of the learner is a reflective one that permits you to "go meta," to inquire whether the script being imposed on the learner is there for the reason that was intended or for some other reason.—"Models of the Learner" (Educational Researcher, 1985)

While this may have sounded odd to teachers and students alike back then, nowadays it makes perfect sense, since everybody's going meta.

You can read my Globe column here and listen to the "Weekend All Things Considered" segment here.

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Comments from our users:

In chemistry the word meta stands for a variety of purposes. However, a primary spot for the word meta is found in benzene chemistry: electrophillic aromatic substitution reaction with EDG (electron donating groups) present as the directing groups, -meta substitution is unlikely. On the other hand similar types of reaction with EWG's (electron withdrawing groups) presence as the directing group facilitates -meta position substitution. It's the very fundamental information in this brunch of science. As I was reading the column I was trying to spot here any metachemistry word. Aristotle was credited for the word "metaphysics,"-is there "metamathematics" or "metabiology" world of word?
Thanks for Mr. Ben for presenting the associated stories specially for the Achilles and The Genie dialogue.

Have unwittingly been encouraging kids to "go meta" in test prep for years! One common example, students confuse "mean", "median" and "mode". They will typically calculate the average (mean) when asked for the median. My suggestion... when asked for any, think about all three and ask yourself, "Which one is it this time? I usually calculate average, but is it median or mode this time?"

In medical research the term "meta" is used for that which represents the substance of numerous articles without further actual research. Entire "truths" are based on this foundation, yet the substance is based on the conclusions of other researchers in their disparate research articles.
It seems to me there is something lacking in the "scientific method" when it depends solely on the results of other's fallible research.